It is not easy as a skeptic of the future. For example, when you publicly raise concerns about whether this Bitcoin thing is really an unreservedly good idea. In the worst case, there is a hail of abuse. In the best case, one can hope for a disparaging “Have fun staying poor” – this is the battle term against those who have not yet been converted. The normal people among the initiated are also called No-Coiner. Poor imagination and digital capital.
Even so-called present-day analysts are subject to the spell and, childlike, defiantly ask themselves why they are not allowed to celebrate a new technology for a change. The part of history where mining the coins exceeds the electricity consumption of a small nation-state just to run the most inefficient payment system in human history? Can you ignore all the fun that you probably last felt like this in a post-structuralist seminar.
Also given that almost all digital currencies are more or less similar in nature to a pyramid game that only works when a steady influx of new disciples converts to belief in costly wealth. Or the fact that almost 90 percent of all 21 million Bitcoins ever to be generated already exist. Or that, according to the analyst firm Flipside Crypto, only just under two percent of all accounts now own around 95 percent of all bitcoins ever generated. This is a concentration of wealth that is unheard of even in the offline world, which is not exactly known for its exuberant justice.
If you want the crypto money, you have to be scanned
So the utopia has plenty of room for improvement. How nice that the start-up Worldcoin has just announced “a new global digital currency that will give every single person on earth a share at the start”. So you want to combine two modern ideas. Crypto money and a kind of unconditional basic income. Well, it’s not that unconditional after all. Another role is played by “a specially developed hardware device that ensures both the humanity and the uniqueness of everyone who logs in, while maintaining the privacy and general transparency of a blockchain”.
That sounds pretty vague. If you read on, you will learn that the hardware in question is a “shiny silver ball” that is used to scan the iris of each user. If you have any concerns, please do not hesitate to contact Microsoft. Here too, people have thought about how to change the crypto ecosystem. And recently filed a patent describing a new way of generating digital money. Instead of letting computers solve arithmetic tasks as before, the coins could also be mined using human-generated data. For example, by exercising or viewing an advertisement. Sensors and scanners would measure the physical and mental exertion of the user, and as a reward after the work is done, a little bit of crypto money beckons.
If you still don’t feel like taking part after all these ideas, there is probably no more help. It’s not the first time that a start-up pitch is reminiscent of the plot of a scary sci-fi story. After all, this might end up reducing power consumption.